The recent application by the inventor, Ser. No. 200,401, of which this application is a continuation-in-part, illustrated in the embodiment of FIG. 13, instrumented monorail and walking beam conveyors utilizing fiber optics directed through portions of the conveyor apparatus which could be illuminated on demand in order to provide one or more targets for tracking or homing purposes using robotic or other automation.
Also described in Ser. No. 200,401 are many other novel features of interest. These are:
a) The general concept of use of such `active` lighting in automation and particularly the use of fibers therefore. PA1 b) The use of `active detection` wherein the light is directed from the robot into one end of a fiber, and sensed at the opposite end of said fiber. PA1 c) The use of other materials than fibers, for example, translucent fixtures of teflon or ceramic. PA1 d) The use of multiple target points on the illuminated piece to be tracked. PA1 e) The use of blow-offs to keep the targeted fixtures clean. PA1 f) The use of pulsed or modulated light sources discrimination against background noise. PA1 g) The use of light sources and electro-optical sensors both located on robot where the light source of the robot is directed to a predicted entrance point of the fiber(s) and the light emanating from the opposite end of the fiber(s) is sensed by the camera of the robot. Two robots for example could be used, one to light the part or fixture, the other to sense it. PA1 1. Ser. No. 348,803 "Method and Apparatus for Automatically handling Assembling ("Targets") or working on objects" PA1 2. Ser. No. 453,710 "Robot Calibration" PA1 3. Ser. No. 592,443 "Robots and Manipulative Arms" PA1 4. Ser. No. 323,395 "Robot Tractors" PA1 5. Robot Tractors, Vehicles, and Machinery (SN) PA1 1. Scan the total part image and find the holes. Once the holes are found, determine the shape of the hole, the size of the hole, or the relative locations of the holes, confining analysis to those holes which are to be considered as targets. PA1 2. Clearly, the above is probably the way to go in many cases. However, another clear case is where the boundaries of the part such as the edges of a basically rectangular cylinder head is known. Having found the edges of the part, one can immediately segment the image into sections and simply scan for holes in certain areas of the field of view. It is likely on a well manufactured part such as a cylinder head, that one could almost immediately go to the zone on which the desired holes were located and simply confirm that they are of roughly the right diameter so as to act as the target holes.
g) In addition, the copending application described how to track conveyors carrying parts and made reference to the tracking the parts themselves.